The research focus to study the buying pattern of Indian
consumers for cosmetic products. This paper attempt to identify the various
factors that impact or influences the customers for buying a product. The study
reveals that different factors like quality, price, advertisement, packaging
and brand have significant impact on consumer buying behavior. This paper helps
to contribute to the knowledge or give an extra idea to cosmetic companies so
that they can understand the purchasing behavior of the consumers.

In today’s world,
the customer’s demand and the power of the retailers is tremendously growing
due to competitive environment and changing business. It is vital to have a
long term relationship with customers and it became necessary for both survival
and success of producers. Nowadays in the market a tremendous growth is
experienced by the beauty products and has become one of the leading industry
in the world. In Indian scenario too, the consumption and using of cosmetic
products have increased rapidly. In our country, annually 15-20% of cosmetics
market is reportedly growing. Comparing to other beauty products, demand for
skin whitening is driving the trend. As consumer’s awareness about appearance,
beauty, grooming and choice of personal care products increases results in the
increasing demand of cosmetics and beauty products in the market. Manufactures
are likely to be aggressive to identify consumers’ needs and requirements
across all categories in cosmetics. Customers purchase products based on their preferences,
needs and buying power.

Media have an
idea about how the customers in this era can be targeted and they have the
power to change their thinking way through their emotions, wants, needs and
demands. Market researchers and organizations is conducting a plenty of studies
and they are spending billions of dollars to identify the important factors
that influence consumer’s cosmetic consumption. The customer’s purchase
decision is now becoming a complex process. Consumer’s behavior, perceptions
and attitudes determine their purchase intentions. To evaluate and access a
specific product, purchase behavior becomes a key point for consumers

Key to the success of any business organizations lies
in the hands of customers. Understanding their needs, wants and their buying
behavior determines the organization success. To predict the future trends, marketing
personnel are analyzing the customers buying behavior pattern. The term Consumer
behavior is defined as the analysis of when, why, why and how people purchase a
product. In ancient days’ people don’t prefer to buy cosmetic products, as they
know the harmful effect of using these artificial but now the trend has changed.
Youth and adults in India are more concerned about their looks and for that
they prefer to buy cosmetics products.

Consumer’s cosmetic consumption depends on different
attributes like Price, Quality, Brand name, Brand loyalty and Labeling. All
these attributes now become a new trend in the market. Currently, people are
falling for quality, branded and cheap priced products. Early days price was
the only factor in the mindset of people. But now, all these factors have a
major role in dominating the market.

The main purpose of this study is to
contribute to a knowledge and better understanding of consumer buying behavior
towards cosmetic purchasing and what all are the factors influencing the
consumers in purchasing cosmetics.

CONSUMER
BUYING BEHAVIOR

Consumer buying behavior
is a decision process as well as an attitude of the people involved in
purchasing and using products. Consumers make
purchase decisions for buying small as well as large products. After
recognizing a need or a want, consumers begin searching for products or
services that fit their requirements.

Their
decision depends upon many criteria. However, consumer purchases have happened
much before their actual purchase. Marketing plays an important role in this. Marketing
& Advertising have a strong positive impact on buying behavior of consumers,
and they directly influence consumer buying a product from a company that she/he is well aware of. In ancient
days, consumers were not bothered about the attributes before buying a product.
But there comes a tremendous change in the consumer buying behavior of the 21st
Century.

Consumer purchase
decision has now become a complex process. Purchase intention is usually
related to the perceptions, attitude and behavior of consumers. Consumers
considered purchase behavior as a key point to access and evaluate specific
product. Ghosh (1990) states that to predict buying behavior of consumers,
purchase intention is an effective tool. Due to the influence of price, quality
and value there is a possibility for changing purchase intention. Gogoi (2013)
state that during the buying process, consumers are influenced by external as
well as internal motivations. Kotler & Armstrong (2010) & Kawa et al (2013)
talks about the six stages which are: knowledge, awareness, preference,
interest, persuasion and purchase that researchers have proposed before
planning or deciding to buy the product. Gogoi (2013) states that, Customers
have an intuition that products that are little known, low cost, and simple
packaging have a high chance of risk because the quality and value of these
products is not trustable.